My Favourite Health & Wellness Apps – Take 2

After lots of lovely feedback after my initial top health and wellness apps blog, I thought I’d do it again, discussing some apps I’ve come across more recently and would recommend. As last time there’s a variety in here in the hope that this will appeal to people and different stages of their health and wellbeing journey.

Down dog

Up first is my new favourite app, with an epic name to boot! Down Dog.

Down dog is a Vinyasa yoga app. The brilliance of this app comes from you being able to formulate the yoga workout you feel like, every time! It’s claimed there’s over 30,000 different configurations but I haven’t got round to trying them all yet!

When choosing a workout you first set your level of difficulty, from beginner through to advanced. You then decided what type of workout you feel like doing, from a quick Sun Salutation to a full practice up to 90 minutes. One of my favourite elements is the Boost feature, allowing your practice to focus on a particular area such as hip opening, core, standing balances and aerobics, and so much more! This also can help to vary up practices too.

Once the core features of you yoga practice have been chosen you can decide who you have guiding you through the practice, with 7 different voices of various accents both male and female to choose from. You can choose the pace of the practice and music which accompanies it, the music changes along with the practice to be in keeping with your breath. You can also choose if you have the name of poses presented in the video either in English or Sanskrit.

Whilst it sounds a lot to choose from, setting up a routine takes only a few seconds.

If you’re new to yoga it’s beginner friendly, with a 3 day Intro into Yoga series available as well as the beginner level to choose from when designing your own practice.

You can download your favourite practices to keep handy for when you’re not connected to the internet.

Overall this is my favourite new app without a doubt! I recommend it to any yogi who likes practicing at home or outside not in a class setting or anyone who’s keen to get into yoga.

Strava:

Strava is a great app to track your fitness, especially if you don’t have a fitbit/garmin etc. This app lets you record your activity and analyses your workout for you. Routes can be tracked, pace, calories burned and elevation. You can compete with others or challenge yourself with a monthly training challenge.

The app enables you to compare your performance from previously to monitor progress.

If social accountability is a good incentive for you, you can share your routes and workout and allow friends and followers to comment. You can also share new cycling/running routes along with photos.

I think this app is great if you want to track progress, set yourself exercise goals and/or share your workouts.

Gratitude journal – private diary & daily quotes:

Practicing gratitude regularly can increase your happiness and positive outlook on life. This app helps to keep you motivated and incentivised to acknowledge what you are grateful of every day.

Personally I’d been meaning to start a gratitude journal for months, and a little notebook was sitting waiting for me in my bedroom, but I never got round to it.

This app is simple but effective. It provides a space for your to write down what you are grateful for each day. You can set daily reminders so you don’t forget.

A feature of the app I think is great is that you can write and share gratitude letters. Being connected to your contacts you can write a note to someone and ping it off with ease and help spread some thanks and gratitude.

The app also has a daily quote notification, giving you a boost of positivity to start the day.

Whist writing your journal you can attach a picture to your entry to help make that memory come to life in the future.

You can set a lock and passcode to help keep this journal private if you want to.

Overall, I think this is a great app for anyone who needs a little nudge in the right direction in practicing regular gratitude.

Active 10:

Active 10 is an Public Health England app designed to help you to be more active.

It uses the principle that brisk walking counts towards activity goals and guideline recommended activity levels. You don’t need to sign up to a workout programme or join a gym, incorporating brisk walks into your daily routine in chunks of 10 minutes or more counts, with the associated mental and physical health benefits.

It focuses on getting 10 minutes of brisk walking into your day, and achieving recommended activity targets in the process. It guides you so you know if you’ve been walking fast enough/’briskly’. You can track your progress and it gives you goals to work towards.

It also guides you as to where you can translate walking you do in your day into ‘Active 10s’, from a lunchtime walk to walking to dog.

This app is great for anyone who’s looking to increase their activity levels, especially how to incorporate this into daily routines.